In short ...
The tickets prices were unbeatable, hence the reason I booked with China Southern. The quality of service we received was on par with all the "Western" airlines I have flown with. On that basis, China Southern would probably be my first preference when next flying to Europe.
Somewhat longer ...
CAAC, the old Chinese Communist government monopoly airline, had a horrible reputation through to the 1980's. In the late 1980's, the government broke CAAC up into several providers, the largest of which were Air China, China Southern, and China Eastern. CAAC still exists, but now largely has an oversight role. China Southern focused heavily than the others on attracting overseas investment (and building a reputation for business travel) and aims in the medium term to compete with the "big boys" in Southeast Asia: Singapore, Cathay, and Qantas. About half the passengers on each leg of the flight were, to my untrained eye, "not Asian". I certainly got the impression they were holding themselves to a "top tier" international standard.
The price could not be beat. Our tickets were about $4400 total (4 tickets) return to the UK from Brisbane, and stable at that price for a few months before I actually made the purchase. To compare, the best "on sale" prices with more reputable airlines were in the $5500-6000 realm. Only EVA (a Taiwanese carrier) came close. That's a 20-25% saving on the cost of flights, or a saving of about 5% of the total cost of our vacation. Fantastic.
The quality of the flights themselves were as we would expect from a western international carrier regarding check-in and boarding, cabin service, food, in-flight entertainment system, and so on. If anything, I suspect the available space aboard was a little _more_ than usual: I did not feel "cramped" to the same degree that I usually do on long flights. Then again, maybe it was because I was using a neck pillow this time. The only minor quibble that I had was that the website seemed a bit unfriendly to navigate around; perhaps this is a legacy of authoring the website in Mandarin for a Chinese audience, and then using a direct (?automated) translation for English viewers.
To me, the most pleasant surprise was the free overnight stay in Guangzhou. (Arrive 1700 local time one day, leave 0930 the next). The stay itself was promoted by China Southern as an entitlement if you have a break of at least 8 hours between connecting flights. The surprise came from how smoothly everything worked. For those interested, the process worked for us as follows.
We notified the check-in staff at Brisbane that we were planning to take up China Southern's offer of the overnight stay. Checked baggage went all the way through to London. They gave us some temporary visa paperwork to complete en route (that wound up not being needed), and rang ahead to let the staff in Guangzhou know. Immediately on arrival, we were met by China Southern staff asking who was staying overnight. We had a sticker slapped on our shirts, were given a marked map of the (absolutely huge) terminal complex, and directed to immigration queue #19. This is a dedicated queue for a 24-hour visa exemption for transit purposes. We only needed to fill in the usual yellow "arrival" form. Through immigration, through customs with nothing to declare, off to the China Southern services desk. Long line, but plenty of staff, meant about a 2 minute wait (which was pretty much our universal experience of everything in Guangzhou) before I had a list of 16 hotels put in front of me. Chose Holiday Inn, got another sticker ("Holiday Inn") plastered on our shirts, then 5 meters away was a Holiday Inn concierge who led us to the Holiday Inn shuttle bus. The whole process, from disembarking from the plane, to being in the room at the (well-appointed) hotel, was about 2 hours ... and 30 minutes of that was the shuttle bus trip.
Breakfast the next morning was wonderful - see the photo in Julie's blog entry - and we went straight from breakfast onto the shuttle bus. The total cost of the stopover to us was $4 - which we spent on a few items at a bakery when we wandered around the neighbourhood of the hotel before retiring to bed, plus a $4 ATM withdrawal fee. :-/ In return, a pretty good night's sleep to break up a total flight time of 22 hours, across 10 time zones.
So, yes, if you are shopping for plane tickets and China Southern comes in competitively priced, then be assured the quality of the flight and service are comparable to the airlines you are used to.
